Federal jury convicts Streamwood woman of fraud
A federal jury has convicted the head of a Schaumburg home health company on fraud charges alleging she schemed to bill Medicare for millions of dollars in unnecessary services, the U.S. attorney's office said Monday.
Diana Jocelyn Gumila, 46, of Streamwood, was found guilty on 21 counts of health care fraud and three counts of making false statements in a health care matter, after a two-week trial that ended Friday, authorities said. Gumila, who faces up to 10 years in prison on each fraud count, is scheduled to be sentenced July 26.
The U.S. Attorney's office said that as manager of Suburban Home Physicians, which did business as Doctor at Home, Gumila directed employees to perform in-home visits with patients who were physically capable of leaving their residences and not in need of the in-home treatment.
Gumila also inflated Medicare costs by directing employees to bill the treatment at the most complicated levels, even though the visits were typically routine and did not qualify for the elevated billing, authorities said.
Evidence at her trial included a surreptitious audio recording in which Gumila can be heard telling a new doctor to "paint the picture" of patients so as to make them appear confined to their homes, federal prosecutors said. Jurors also saw emails from Gumila, including one in which she referred to a physician who did not read orders before signing them as "the type of doctor we need (because) he will just do what we tell him to do," prosecutors said.
Gumila was charged as part of a federal investigation into Doctor at Home. Alan Newman, a physician from Chicago, and James Ademiju, a nurse from Matteson, previously were convicted on charges stemming from the probe, authorities said.
The investigation was conducted by the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, which is part of the Health Care Fraud Prevention & Enforcement Action Team (HEAT), a joint initiative between the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.